


Wrap Your Soul Around Mine

by Rey_Lo



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Chewie is a dog, Description of injuries/accidents, Domestic Violence, Evil Snoke, F/M, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kelpies, Manipulative Sheev Palpatine, Pilot Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, Scottish Myths, Star Wars meets Anne Bronte, Strangers to Lovers, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25716844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rey_Lo/pseuds/Rey_Lo
Summary: RAF Flight Lieutenant Ben 'Kylo' Solo has a fiance and a job he loves until a tragic accident leaves his friend and fellow officer Charlie 'Ren' Renwick dead and Ben badly scarred and medically discharged from the air force.Forced to come home to his dysfunctional family in the Scottish Highlands, he falls into a deep depression which leads to him hurting those who care for him the most. Ben isolates himself to a small cottage at the edge of a Scottish Loch near his family's home as he tries to fight his demons.But one day a mysterious woman, Rey, and her daughter, Bea, become tenants of the neighbouring cottage and befriending them changes his life forever.My favourite Star Wars characters in a fic set in the Scottish Highlands with elements of Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall woven in.Thank you so much toAndrina_Nightshadefor being my Beta and all her encouragement and support for this work. Please check out her wonderful works too.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 19
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that this prologue details a suicide attempt by drowning.

###  Prologue - Cold Water 

The water is still tonight. So still that Rey cannot tell where the water and air meet and the fractured moonlight is reflected in the mirror created by the water. Usually, even on the brightest of days in the village, the wind whips across the Loch causing the water to churn and froth but on this night the water is calm almost as if it is seducing Rey and whispering enticements to her to enter its depths.  
  


She remembers the story that Ben told her and Bea about the Grimtaash, the water Kelpie who haunts the Loch and who protected the Walker family of old by luring their enemies to the watery depths with its sirens call. Bea had been mesmerised by the tale and for days after had followed Ben as was her way asking him all sorts of questions – ‘What did it look like? Will it come for me if I go for a swim?’ When Ben had told Bea it could be defeated with metal, she had taken to putting the old coal cellar key in her pocket just in case she encountered the Grimtaash on her way to school. When Ben had appeared with a carved wooden Grimtaash it had become her prized possession, taking pride of place on the dresser but only after she had shown it to Maz and most of the village.  
  


Bea. The thought of her makes her curl more in on herself, pulling her knees closer into her chest as she pictures her daughter dancing across the sand in front of her, her auburn curls fluttering in the breeze. Bea is lost to her forever now after what has happened. She is why she needs to do this. She cannot exist in a word where she cannot have Bea beside her. A year ago, when they first came to this place, she had written a letter to Bea so that if something happened to her, at least she would in some way know the truth of her past. Rey knows only too well the pain of being abandoned by those that are meant to care, love and protect you. She hopes that someone will find the letter in her belongings. Maybe Finn or Ben will be the person to sort through her possessions.  
  


Thinking of Ben causes her chest to further tighten with the loss of what could have been. She has broken their promise to each other, made on a similar beach, on a day that feels like a lifetime ago. She hopes that he too will understand why she has done this, why she has left him. Ben alone has been the only one to understand how solitude and loss can eat away at a person until there is nothing left. He would not condemn her to that life, she thinks. She wishes that she had been more prepared and been able to tell him how she felt.  
  


It is then that Rey realises she has left a message of sort and a noise halfway between a garish laugh and a sob escapes her lips. He will see what she has done, and the pieces will fall into place, but this will protect him in a way. She will leave the evidence here and they will not be able to place blame at anyone else’s feet but hers. She looks then finally at the gun in her hand, the Walker legacy of a victory from a war long past. The blood on her hands is sticky and suddenly it repulses her to think of whose blood it is. She can remember the power she felt as she knelt before the man who had brought her so much pain. She had not brought her hands to his wound to staunch the bleeding but rather to feel the life source run out of him. “You will never touch me again” she had snarled in his ear holding those blue eyes with her own as the blood had frothed at his mouth. She drops the gun to the sand and crawls forward to the waters edge to wash away her the cloying crimson that stains her.  
  


The first rays of the new day are starting to reach across the sky when she lifts her head as the water washes away the blood, red rivulets running down her fingers. It is then that she sees the blue flashing lights on the opposite side of the Loch, coming along the Shore Road. ‘They know.’ a voice in her head whispers. ‘You have to do this now.’ Maybe it is the Grimtaash made real in her mind that is speaking out to her, tempting her to join it in the deep. Slowly she rises and with a sharp intake of breath, walks into the water.  
  


Although it is the summer, the cold of the water feels like knives stabbing her all over. She clenches her fists, telling herself that the cold is good – it will be quicker this way. It does not take far into the loch before the seabed sharply goes down and the water reaches her chin. She pauses there, feeling the cold of the water surrounding her now, sweeter than before, though her fists remain clenched. She is a poor swimmer. She had never swum before Ben had induced her to try and she has only been in the water a handful of times. If she walks forward, there is no way back. She turns back to look at the beach and the house beyond. No one has followed her yet, but she can see the flash of blue lights reflected off the old stone walls. ‘Do it now.’ The seductive voice in her mind purrs ‘Or they will find you.’ Turning back and closing her eyes, Rey steps forward and slips fully under the water.  
  


She lets the arms of the sea carry her forward, delivering her to the Grimtaash or possibly the devil. Whoever resides in this place where she will rest. Or maybe the water will wash away her sin and she will be forgiven, if not in this life but in the next. She opens her eyes and looks up and marvels that although she is now looking up from the underneath, the reflection of the moonlight is unchanged. Maybe she will just be in this peaceful deep place, a place devoid of pain and loss and be able to look at her loved ones through the mirror of the lake. Maybe she will be granted that. A mirror that she can look through to the world above. She allows the water to pull her gently further down.  
  


Suddenly she is pulled by an unseen current and her eyes widen as the last bit of air escapes her mouth. Looking up she cannot see anything through the darkness. She hears another voice in her mind now, one of panic, telling her to move - swim - but although she flails her arms and legs in an attempt at reaching the surface, she seems to sink lower still. ‘I’ve been in the water too long, too cold’ she thinks as her vision starts to blur. Her lungs feel on fire as her futile attempts to reach the air burns the last of the oxygen she has left.  
  


That is when they come to Rey, the people she loves. Finn and Rose, Leia and Maz flit across her eyelids. Bea, she sees as a new-born infant at her breast, with eyes peeking up adjusting to light for the first time. Then older, dressed in a ballerina’s tutu and yellow welly boots chasing after the brown whirl that is Chewie on the beach. And Ben. He is reaching out with his hand, a plea in his dark eyes as his mouth forms the word ‘please’.  
  


But its too late and she cannot fight anymore.  
  


It feels like a lifetime passes of a complete absence of feeling; all her senses lost to this cold dark place.  
  


Then Rey feels something. A large hand encircles her forearm and pulls. She does not resist. Could not resist if she tried. Rey knows what this means, who this is, and she allows herself to be pulled from the dark depths of the water and up towards the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Kelpie is a shape-changing aquatic creature of Scottish Mythology who inhabit the Lochs and Streams of Scotland. They appear as a horse to entice unsuspecting people for a ride only to lure them into the water to drown them though they can also take on human form. In some stories, they can be defeated by metal. Grimtaash was a being from Alderaanian myth that protects the royal house of Alderaan from corruption and betrayal. I thought I would combine the two to give it a Gaelic twist!
> 
> Loch is the Scots, Scottish Gaelic and Irish word for lake or sea inlet. 
> 
> Musical inspiration for this prologue is Never Let Me Go by Florence + the Machine and Cold Water by Damian Rice.


	2. Ghosts in the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghosts of the past haunt a scarred Ben and the man who has caused his most recent pain brings news... has someone moved into the neighbouring cottage?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that this chapter contains references to military service, a plane crash, scars and injuries and alcoholism.
> 
> Thank you so much to [Andrina_Nightshade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andrina_Nightshade/pseuds/Andrina_Nightshade) for being my beta and all her help with this chapter.

## 

Chapter 2

### 

Ghosts in the Wind

Ben Solo was meant for the sky. Flying was in his blood. Everyone who knew his family said so until Ben could see no other life for himself. 

His grandfather had been an ace fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain. Anakin Walker had soared above the British coast destroying German aircraft with cool precision. Later in the war, he had been shot down over France and taken prisoner by the enemy. Even then he would not be cowed and had made increasingly daring escapes before finally being interred at Colditz for what remained of the war. 

Naturally, his son Luke had followed in his footsteps, serving in the Falklands Campaign, and rising to the rank of Air Commodore. Ben had been five when he had watched his Uncle for the first time in his Harrier Jet. Sitting on his father’s shoulders he had been mesmerised as the plane had twisted and turned in a graceful dance above his head before roaring past him. When he had arrived home that night exhausted and elated – a model of the plane clutched in his hand - he told his mother Leia that he would fly a jet plane just like his Uncle Luke. 

It was Ben’s father Han, though, who cemented his longing to be airborne. Han was the son of a Wisconsin crop duster and had been taught to fly himself from an early age. It was he who had taken Ben on the light aircraft he had nearby for his first flight. Ben had already hero-worshipped his father but was utterly enthralled by him as Han had gently eased the small plane into the sky and he had begged his father to teach him how to fly too. When Han had returned to America after their divorce, when Ben was ten, Leia had been unsure what upset Ben the most, the loss of his father or the loss of his opportunity to fly. 

It had not been entirely unexpected that Ben would apply to join the RAF, but Leia had had her misgivings. He had always been a sensitive child, with too much of his father’s heart. Leia was the first to admit that she was not maternal; her nature was too practical, too focused at the task in hand to have shown the easy affection that Han could. Her relationship with Ben had been strained since she had refused to let Han take him to America when they separated. She had been too hurt, too proud to allow it so had dug her heels in when Han and then Ben had pleaded their case. She would never admit it, but as she stood and watched her son sob on the driveway as his father’s car pulled away, she had realised she had lost a part of Ben that day and there would be no going back. Through Ben’s early teens they had fought constantly, and eventually she had sent him, not to Han, but to a boarding school near where her brother, Luke, was based. 

Ben loved the RAF. He loved being a pilot. There were obvious things to enjoy about it – he was able to fly the fastest planes, detonate weapons and blow things up – the stuff of his boyhood dreams since he had first seen Uncle Luke flying all these years before. But what he loved the most was the sense of belonging it gave him, the camaraderie – a cross section of different characters and cultures -who became his family. His own family may have let him down, refused to listen to him and walked away but the people he served with became his new family. A family who would not let him down. 

And Ben excelled at flying. It may have been due to that mighty Walker blood or Han’s early teachings, but Ben in a Jet was something to behold. Even Luke had to grudgingly agree. Ben passed all the stages of his training with ease, graduating to become a Tornado Pilot, using the call sign Kylo. 

In the RAF, everything has meaning. Every action is either steeped in tradition or has a practical purpose. You face this way when the March Past plays out of respect of the people who went before you. You walk and talk a certain way because of this reason. Your uniform is maintained to the inch. How diligently you follow the rules speaks volumes of the kind of airman you are, and your rank says something about your history and the respect you have earned. 

Kylo was the airman that his squadron aspired to be. Focused, determined and one with the plane he flew. Along with his navigator Charlie ‘Ren’ Renwick he was an unstoppable force, the pair flying countless missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kylo loved the freedom of being in the vast limitless sky. The moment of breaking through thick cloud into a world of blue that felt so removed from his life as Ben Solo. Every flight was different, every aircraft different. Becoming Kylo made anything seem possible. 

He and Charlie were as close as brothers could be. He had a life he loved and during this time he even met Kay, a person to share it with. Charlie got married, Ben got engaged and, in these moments, he felt everything was slotting into place. 

Fate had far crueller plans for Ben Solo.

It started out like any other afternoon. On a routine training sortie with another jet, a misjudgement in a turn by Kylo caused the jet carrying him and Ren to crash into the side of a mountain in the Sottish Highlands. Kylo barely survived the fireball that engulfed the plane while Ren, his navigator and best friend was killed instantly on impact. 

***

Ben wakes with a start, heart thundering in his chest and sweat lashing off his skin. In his repertoire of nightmares, the fireball is up there with his worst and as the tendrils of the dream retreat, he can almost feel the heat of the fire on his skin, taste the ash and smoke as the cockpit burns around him At least this time he has managed to waken before the sceptre of Charlie rises burned and bloody to come for him and finish what the fireball could not. 

He closes his eyes and tries to centre himself, slow his rapid breathing and racing heart, and try not to think of what he believes he needs to dull this pain. As his breathing becomes more regular and his pulse returns to a normal rhythm he almost feels proud that he has managed to ignore the overwhelming need he feels. _Tano will be proud_ , he thinks with a wry smile. 

Still, there is an aftertaste to the nightmare that no meditation that his counsellor can teach him will subdue. The scar running down the left side of his face burns as if it was newly made. Tracing its path down his cheek, his fingers feel wet and for a few brief moments he almost can’t look at his hand in case it is blood. But the clear liquid on his fingers can only be one thing, and while the scar exudes its phantom pain of being fresh, he knows that it is well healed. Or as healed as it can be.  


Ben knows that some scars can never be healed. 

A quick glance at his watch show it is still early. 4:30 am. Daylight is already flooding under the thin, shredded curtains at his window. This far North, the darkness of night is fleeting. Ben understands that trying to get any kind of sleep now will be a pointless exercise. Time to move onto distraction technique number two – train. 

He throws back the covers and swings his feet to the floor, feeling for the stiffness that the metal plates that hold his bones together give him. _It’s not too bad today_ , he thinks as he stretches. No one in the village will be up to scare so he does not change out of the shorts he has slept in, and merely pulls on the battered trainers sitting by his bed.  


“You coming?” he asks and a head appears from the furry brown hairball resting on the floor, one eye opened which appraises him critically. “I’m not waiting for you Chewie.” This gets the furball to stretch out before standing. She is a large dog, her head just coming up to where Ben’s hand falls. He strokes the soft brown curls at the dome of her head. Chewie is the one creature that he does not mind touching him and he finds comfort in the familiarity of her warm fur. 

_“Ben, she’s done it again!”_

__

_Kay hops into the small kitchen of their cottage, pup in one arm trying to wrestle the half-chewed shoe with her opposite hand. The pup isn’t going to let her prize go without a fight though, and eventually Ben helps to wrestle the offending fuzzball from the shoe and sits her in his lap while Kay stands appraising the macerated leather._

__

_“Ruined!” she declares throwing it into the corner of the room. “I don’t have another decent pair after she got to the last ones, and I’m already late for my meeting with Leia.” She sits opposite him and pulls of the matching shoe which is tossed to its ruined partner. “I’m sure that this Maz you’re so fond of has sold us a defective dog.”_

__

_He smiles at that. It feels like the first smile for a long time, though he cuts it short when it starts to feel like the scar will split apart due. Smiling feels a step too far, though the plastic surgeons have assured him this won’t happen._

__

_But he would not put it past Maz to have given him a defective dog. She always seemed to find a way of offloading offending items onto others, yet she did it in a way that made you believe it was your fault things had turned out badly. Everyone, it seemed, was too polite to even attempt to return them._

__

_“It’s good to see you smile,” Kay says gently. For a brief moment, he thinks that she will reach out to touch him and this fear causes his breathing to hitch but he can see she thinks better of it and instead she reaches for her coffee._

__

_But her eyes don’t leave his, and he can see the sadness in them for him._

__

_“If mum’s being too hard on you, I can have a word,” he says, trying to move the conversation back to a less strained subject, hating feeling weak in front of her. Not for the first time, he thinks that it was a mistake for her to be here. She deserves more than his, trapped in a remote cottage in the arse-end of nowhere, with a man who is more scars than flesh and who cannot bear her to touch him. He seems to have become more her personal crusade than fiancé, as if it is her mission to heal him._

__

_“It’s okay, she says with a slight shrug. “Your mum… well, she is your mum, but I think I can handle her. We spent a lot of time together when you were in hospital. And Poe’s nice enough. I don’t know why you’re so down on him. He can be quite charming, you know.”_

__

_“Charming’s one way of looking at it but you should try growing up with the wonder boy.” Ben was in no mood to hear how **charming** his stepbrother could be. Not when he himself looked like Frankenstein’s monster. _

__

_“I better go,” Kay says, gulping down the last of her coffee and jumping up from her seat. “I shouldn’t be too late home. Please take that ‘thing’ out for at least one walk. I don’t want to lose any more of my wardrobe.” There is a few more moments of bustle as she fetches a pair of intact shoes, then grabs her bag, smoothing her blonde hair in the mirror at the front door. Her “Goodbye” is cheerful, but he can hear the force she has to put in it._

__

_And mercifully he is alone. He thought he would miss the company of people more, would miss his squadron. But he finds being alone easier than having to pretend he’s the same Ben that he was before the accident._

__

_There’s a nibbling at his fingers and he realises the damned pup is chewing him now. “Maybe that’s what we should call you,” he says. “Chewie”. Her brown mournful eyes look up at him and he rubs the spot behind her ears that she seems to love._

__

_He puts her down and she trots after him as he goes into one of the kitchen cupboards. He had felt the pull since he had woken, but since Kay left it’s become an all-consuming need. He feels around, moving packets of cereal and tins till his fingertips touch the smooth glass of bottle. His mouth begins to water with anticipation when he pours a large measure into the mug that held his coffee._

__

_He feel’s Chewie’s paws against his legs. Looking down, his eyes meet hers, and it feels she is almost asking him a question about what he is about to do. “Can you keep a secret?” he asks her before he raises the glass to his lips._

***

For his run, Ben follows the Shore Road through the village that winds its way along the edge of the Loch. A long time ago, they fished for herring on Loch Dagobagh, and the village of Crait had grown and prospered with it. The herring boats are long gone but there are still a number of boats on the water these days. The village has retained its quaint charm and tourists come in the summer months to enjoy the Loch and its views with the Dathomir Hills rising up behind the Loch. In the winter though it becomes the sleepy village that Ben remembers as a child. 

It’s a place where everyone is connected to in one way or another. A place where secrets never remain hidden for long.  
The hour of the morning means that he passes no one, save a solitary and unfamiliar grey van. Probably climbers on their way up to the hills, trying to get an early start. Chewie runs beside him, stopping occasionally to sniff at something on the ground before catching up with Ben again. The day is bright, but there is a haar on the Loch, the mist making it look like the clouds have fallen from the sky to settle on the water. 

Ben concentrates on his breathing and rhythm, trying to block out the remnants of his dreams. He’s always been fit – being in the forces meant that exercise was always part of his daily routine. After the accident it became a way of getting back some part of the person he had been from the broken shell left. Now he uses training as a distraction. Something that has become its own addiction to block the need he feels from the alcohol he still craves. 

The distraction works and he doesn’t realise that he’s followed the road to the Walker estate, until he’s almost at the gates that lead up to the house. He stops abruptly, realising where he is. He didn’t mean to come this far or this way. Ben usually avoids the spectre of his childhood home if he can, even if it’s residents and villagers cannot forget his connection to this place or what happened here a year ago.

The wall has been repaired, although you can still see that something happened here, the new mortar carving a scar in the old worn stone. Propped up against the wall, flowers have been left. There’s no card to indicate who has left them there. He can’t imagine it’s been his mother. Leia would think grieving to be a weakness. Maybe Kay or perhaps Maz, he thinks.

He bends down and places his hand to the cool stone, tracing where it was broken but now mended. He wishes he could return to that night and change things, say the things that he should have said but its too late now. A gust of wind blows through the surrounding trees, rustling their leaves. He snatches his hand back. It is almost as if he can feel a presence here, something or someone who can’t let go. 

He shouldn’t have come back here after the accident, and he shouldn’t have stayed a year ago. There are too many ghosts in the wind. Reminders of a life lost.

 _I need to let the past die_ , he thinks. _Kill it if I have too._ And with that thought he turns and runs back the way he came. 

***

Ben planes the wood in smooth strokes, backwards and forwards in a soothing rhythm. His nightmare, and then going to the wall have left him further on edge. He feels raw and his senses cry out to be numbed in a liquifying caress that alcohol provides. But the thought of not finishing the restoration of Han’s boat quells the need for now. He needs it to make his escape in one way or another. 

Han was a pilot not only in the air but on the sea. He had taught Ben how to sail in the small sailing boat before he had left. Ben hadn’t liked sailing as much as flying but he had relished that time with his dad, just the two of them together. Han had enjoyed being a father but that had not extended to being a husband and his presence throughout Ben’s childhood had been transitory events, brief glimpses of family life that ended all too quickly amid hot tempers and harsh words between his parents. Still, when they could, he and Han escaped the tense atmosphere of the house for sailing and fishing on the _Millennium Falcon_ , the boat Han had bought for them both. 

His workshop is down from his cottage, at the edge of a small inlet of the Loch. There is a small beach and a jetty where what is left of the _Falcon_ sits. The cottage next door has been empty for years. It’s a mile or so out of the village, so he is mainly undisturbed. Sometimes, the occasional tourists get lost and find themselves on his beach, but one look at his scarred face is usually enough of an incitement to leave, plus Chewie can be an excellent guard dog when she wants to be and she seems to realise that he doesn’t want intruders in his life. 

Earlier, when he had come back from his run, the grey van that had passed him had been parked outside the neighbouring cottage. A quick look around had shown no trespassers on his solitude and the cottage seemed as deserted as when he left. 

Hearing a car engine in the small dirt path leading to his cottage, he thinks that whoever has left the van here has returned and now gone; but then the engine stops and soon there is the footsteps of someone walking down towards his workshop. As the footsteps get closer, there’s a familiarity to them and he barely has to look up to realise who has come. 

He’s not seen him in nearly nine months, not since he came to collect Kay and her belongings, sitting resolutely in the driver’s seat as Ben had thumped on the cars bonnet, demanding he come out and face him like a man. Although Ben only lives a couple of miles away, they have managed to avoid meeting.

But now Poe stands in front of him. His stepbrother and the man who betrayed him. 

They hold eyes in silence. Ben is determined that he will make Poe feel as uncomfortable as possible, which isn’t hard given his ruined face. Let Poe remember that he kicked him further when he was already at his lowest. Ben clenches his fists. He’s bigger than Poe, has more muscle mass, and could easily take him but he knows that the satisfaction of hitting him would only be gratifying for a few moments.

Still it might be worth it, imagining how Kay would take the message he would send back to her on Poe’s ruined face. 

The seconds stretch into minutes, but it is Poe who finally speaks. “Who talks first?” Poe asks in a light voice that Ben recognises as his default attempt at bravado. “Do you talk first? Do I talk first?” 

Ben finishes his scrutiny of his stepbrother and turns his back on him. The back of his workshop holds the few personal mementoes he has, and he fixes onto a photo of him and Han on a beach similar to this one. They had caught fish in the Loch then had went to one of the small rocky islands and grilled them on a fire. A golden memory of a day but he knows who took this picture. He remembers the curly haired boy who had tagged along with them that day and he’s not so fond of the memory now. It is tainted by what has come after.

“I knew my mother would send someone to me eventually,” Ben says, trying to keep his voice as even as possible. “I didn’t know she would send you.”

“She’s worried about you, we all are Ben.” 

“You didn’t seem so worried nine months ago, but let me guess, that wasn’t personal. You just happened to fall in love with my fiancé.” He turns now to look Poe in the eye again. Poe at least has the decency to look guilty. Poe had always sold himself as the brother with the likeable personality compared to Ben’s prickly demeaner when they were in their teens. It must sting a bit to have people know you stole another man’s girl, especially when that man had been reduced to a dry and empty husk. 

“Kay and I both feel bad, Ben but you know the truth. It was as good as over between you. When had you last been had been decent to her or even let her touch you? She loved you and you were horrible to her, Ben. That’s why she left. Me loving her was incidental to that.”

A pang of guilt washes over him. He _had_ been a complete prick towards the end of their tattered relationship and what had happened had been the final straw but still, he can’t forget what they did, how he found out. 

Poe takes a deep breath in. “It’s been a year. Well, you know that obviously, and Leia would like to try and build some bridges. Kay and I do too. Your mum is planning a small gathering on the anniversary. She wants you to be there, Ben. She’s not angry, just worried.”

“She could come and tell me this herself, but as usual she sends someone else to do her dirty work. It’s always been the same way with her.”

“She thought this would be better. She didn’t think you would speak to her. At least if I came, she thought she would get a response, even if it was just to punch me.” A ghost of a smile passes across Ben’s lips when he considers his earlier thoughts but then Poe reaches into the pocket of his leather jacket and any tiny thaw to his feelings freezes over again. “Plus, I have something to give you.” Poe passes over a thick piece of card which Ben takes before realising what it is. Feeling the heavy card, he doesn’t even need to look at the words to know what they signify. It feels like no time has passed since he and Kay had written invitations like this for a wedding that was never to be. The card in his hand feels like it is burning his skin. “We want you to be there Ben. We know it’s a lot to ask but it would mean a lot to Kay and me if you gave us this blessing. “

He turns his back again to Poe and puts the invitation down on his workbench. On it is his grandfather’s flying mask. _I am the grandson of Anakin Walker_ , he thinks. _This man has taken everything – my mother, my home, even my fiancé and now he comes wanting forgiveness? For my life that he’s stole?_ The urge to tear this place and Poe with it nearly threatens to overwhelm him and he spits out through gritted teeth. “I think it’s time for you to go, Poe. Tell my mother if she has anything to say to me, she needs to come to me herself.”

He hears a sigh and then footsteps but then they stop. A few moments pass and then he hears Poe say, “Ben, she just wants you to come home”

“Just go, Poe,” Ben growls hoping this will make him finally leave, leave him alone to his dark thoughts and solitude.

“There’s one more thing. The cottage next door – Kay managed to find a tenant. It’s a girl and her daughter.”

Ben can feel his anger rising. All he craves is isolation and now Kay has done this to him too. He turns to Poe. His voice takes on a timber lower and is more menacing than Poe has heard before.

“What – _**girl?**_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haar is the Scottish word for fog.
> 
> The title of this chapter comes from Birdy's Ghost on the Wind.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at my own fan fiction after reading all of the wonderful Reylo fics on here. It will be dark with a lot of angst but there will be a happy ending - I promise!
> 
> Thank you so much to [Andrina_Nightshade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andrina_Nightshade/pseuds/Andrina_Nightshade) for being my Beta and all her encouragement and support for this work. Please check out her wonderful works too. 
> 
> Please come and say hi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ReyLo74042319)!


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